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Thursday, April 3, 2014

Where I Destroy What Little Credibility I Ever Had

You guys. We got Netflix. (Said in the voice of that girl who says, "I GOT BANGS!")

You know it's going to be an utterly vacuous, shallow post when the first sentence is about Netflix and Legally Blonde. Just wait: It's going to get worse, and by worse, I mean so much better.
We recently got rid of satellite, and I've discovered that it was easier for me to say self-important things like, "I'm not really much of a television person, I just read these little things called books," and other statements that no doubt made people loathe me, but as it turns out, I'm just really, really lazy. I couldn't be bothered to search through aaaalll those channels you get with satellite (my life is just so cumbersome, you know? It's like a Dickens novel around here), so I just never turned it on, except to watch the odd program here and there.

But two weeks ago, we joined the 21st century and got Netflix. We're not sure how long we'll keep it (FOREVER), as we're currently just trying it out free for a month (FOREVER).

There's just one word you need to know to understand my new-found allegiance to Netflix, and it is this: DOCUMENTARIES.

That's right: I love documentaries.
You see what I did there? I made you think I was spurning the intelligentsia HAHAHA for a life of insipid television-watching, but no! I love Netflix for its documentaries.

The first documentary I watched this month? Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. (Aaaaand we're back to the shallows.)

Now, I'm not going to completely ruin the whole feature for you, because I'm sure you've all been busy attempting to cobble 88 minutes of your lives together just to watch this jewel of a documentary, but, but, I just have to give you some of my own, personal highlights. *Spoiler alert!*

The part where one man drove past his local Wal-Mart in rural North Carolina and talked about the scarcity of "ponymerch" (that's Brony for My Little Pony merchandise) in his area.

The part where two PhD psychologists talked about the psychology of Bronies and spoke at length about "the average Brony," who it turns out are "highly educated heterosexual males in their twenties who are most often very introverted," oh, except for a unique subset of extroverted Bronies whom they refer to as either "social Bronies" or "evangelical Bronies" (GUESS WHICH TERM'S MY FAVORITE?).

The ins and outs of BronyCon (this of course being a convention for Bronies, keep up, guys), which features appearances by the voice actors from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (and make no mistake, it is this newest incarnation of My Little Pony that they're all so obsessed with), tons of vendors of My Little Pony merchandise (PONYMERCH), presentations by the scads of Bronies who make online music, art, laser shows, etc, all inspired by My Little Pony, and, more than anything, it seems, the chance for Bronies to finally find their tribe and meet like-minded people.

I know I've just spent three bullet points sounding like I'm making fun of these people (possibly because I mostly was), but there really was something kind of heart-warming about watching all of these people find each other, and to be honest, there are lots of worse things they could be spending their time and energy and emotions on, and there were some unexpected stories in there, like the one of the young man with Asperger's who had trouble relating to other people, but strongly connected to the show Friendship is Magic and its simplified moral stories, went to a BronyCon, and made some new friends without his usual anxiety.

I do have some less, ah, brony-ish documentaries in our queue, not to worry. Next up is Happy People: A Year in the Taiga- "explores life along the River Yenisei in Russia, where the industrious inhabitants of a rural village truly live off the land," It's a Girl- which seems to be about how much it sucks to be born female in so many parts of the world, both of which I will soon view unless I trip and fall and watch Jig- "Go behind the scenes at the fiercely competitive 40th Irish Dancing World Championships" (squee!).

6 comments:

We got rid of cable TV last year and have limited ourselves to Netflix, and I've never looked back. But I will probably never get to watch a documentary because we are currently mired in the world of Doctor Who, of which Netflix has approx 8,384 episodes. I think I'm on year 2009 - whatever year Matt Smith became The Doctor.

There's a documentary about Bronies? Really? Some things in life just don't make sense.

In response to your question on my blog: the anti-rabbit stuff is called "Liquid Fence" but I was too brain-dead yesterday to remember and too lazy to go down to the basement to look. It was recommended to me by Cassi of the "Bad at Being Mom" blog.

If you use it, you should wear old clothes when applying it, as your clothes might pick up the 'interesting' scent of the Liquid Fence. And stand upwind. It's such an interesting smell it may drive away small neighborhood children as well.

We have Netflix and everytime Alan and I sit down to try to find something to watch, we lament that there is nothing on there to watch. I guess we should check out documentaries? (I can't resist using the question mark because I'm not quite convinced.)

We haven't had any cable/satellite TV for 10 years or so, and we have had Netflix for almost that long. We also are Amazon Prime members and have a Roku, so that has supplemented our viewing. In fact, I just canceled the "disk" part of our Netflix account and now we are only getting the streaming part. There just weren't enough things we wanted to see to justify the extra $10 a month, when you can rent a movie through Amazon for $3. We weren't viewing more than one disk in a month.

I can't imagine going back to a viewing experience that could involve channel surfing --that always seemed like such an incredible way to waste an hour of your time without even seeing anything :-)

I had heard of bronies. You know, I get it when teens get into stuff like that, since they're still trying to figure life out, but I don't think I want to socialize with any middle-aged men who get excited about My Little Pony.